John Mccain

Republican presidential candidate John McCain had to share the national spotlight with a group of Republicans in Costa Mesa on Thursday night as he delivered a speech to accept his party’s nomination. A gathering of party faithful at Gary Monahan’s downtown bar, Skosh Monahan’s, got together to watch the speech and ended up on CNN’s national broadcast for a couple of seconds. The producers of the broadcast cut to a camera sitting in front of the small back room in the restaurant where 50 people spent the evening vociferously cheering for McCain, only to catch the crowd during a rare moment of complete calm.

GOP presidential hopeful John McCain recently proposed that the federal government spend part of the Wall Street rescue funds to buy failing mortgages from homeowners and mortgage providers and replace them with government-backed fixed-rate mortgages. What do you think of the plan?   McCain applies the label “American Homeownership Resurgence Plan” to his proposal to spend the $840-billion wealth redistribution bill to buy every defaulted mortgage in America and rewrite them.

Assemblyman Van Tran has invited volunteers and other local residents to a reception in the Little Saigon Outreach Headquarters in Westminster today, encouraging his constituents to enjoy drinks and snacks while cheering on their favorite candidate as the results roll in. Tran has run a Republican neighborhood precinct operation in the headquarters, which has been organizing on behalf of presidential hopeful John McCain. “I think because there is a dearth of events for the presidential primary that it would be nice to have a nice opportunity to get together,” Tran said.

Jewish leaders criticized Republican presidential candidate John McCain last week when he said he preferred a Christian president. The GOP senator had been asked if he thought a Muslim candidate could be a good president. Later he said, “I would vote for a Muslim if he or she was the candidate best able to lead the country and defend our political values.” But he added that “the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation.

Orange County is a popular place for presidential hopefuls. Barack Obama, John McCain and John Edwards have come to the area in recent weeks to raise funds for their 2008 campaigns. Hillary Clinton sent husband Bill to do her bidding. All held private fundraisers, several in Newport Beach. All raised thousands of dollars, with guests paying upwards of $5,000 to meet and greet a candidate. None of them were accessible to the media. We still reported on the events, which are typically held in the homes of well-connected party members.

Presidential hopeful John McCain is expected to make a fundraising pit stop in Newport Beach tonight at a gala event hosted by real estate investment magnate George Argyros and his wife, Julia. Campaign officials confirmed Monday that McCain was expected to make an appearance at a 6 p.m. photo reception and dinner event at an undisclosed location in Newport Beach. The cost of admission at the private event is listed as $25,000 per couple on McCain’s campaign website.

Republican presidential contender John McCain will make a fundraising stop in Newport Beach later this month. McCain’s California Leadership Team will host a luncheon at 11:30 a.m. March 25 at The Island Hotel, 690 Newport Center Drive. This McCain pit stop is the latest of several recent visits to Orange County, said George Andrews, executive director of the Republican Party of Orange County. “When you look at vote margin in the February primary, support for McCain was off the chart in here,” Andrews said.

Will Newport Beach soon be known as the home base of Vice President Christopher Cox? That’s the question on some people’s minds this week as syndicated columnist Robert D. Novak, in an article Monday, said a number of conservative members of Congress are pushing for the former Newport Beach congressman as a running mate for Republican presidential candidate John McCain this year. Novak didn’t specify which members of Congress are backing Cox for the vice presidential slot, but said his supporters favor him for his “stature in the conservative movement.

It’s a historic primary election in California, and local members of the Republican grassroots are out there ready to press for their candidates. With an election early enough to matter in the national race, many say this time the game on the ground is in whole new territory. There’s a very different tenor to the campaign in California this year, said Orange County GOP chairman Scott Baugh, the former Huntington Beach Assemblyman who along with his successor in the district, Assemblyman Jim Silva, is heavily involved in the local campaign for Mitt Romney.

Two years ago, John McCain and the Republican establishment took a gamble with our nation's security and future by naming a know-nothing neophyte as his running mate on the GOP's presidential ticket. Perceived political advantage cynically trumped the party's much ballyhooed "nation first" slogan. For a few weeks it appeared that this shameless ploy might work, particularly against a Democratic candidate whose birth place and religious affiliation were under scurrilous attack. However, in the end, the American voters put the "nation first" and routed this party of special interests.

It?s a House divided ? and not so much because both Democrats and Republicans support the financial policies that has brought us to where we are. Our financial problems are caused by the injection of ?socialist engineering concepts? into the business model (and education model). These socialist concepts began with the FDR administration and have grown, with increased power, under each administration. The core problem is the federal government acting as the ?Great White Father? using socialist engineering concepts applied to a free market.

This is serious. It’s one of those times when you have to make a decision that could affect the rest of your life, which is really hard. You’ll have to do that on Tuesday, if you haven’t already. Yes, I know, it’s confusing and frustrating, with all the commercials and the mailers and the endless yammering and bickering on radio and television around the clock. But remember this: Just what makes that little old ant think he’ll move a rubber tree plant?

GOP presidential hopeful John McCain recently proposed that the federal government spend part of the Wall Street rescue funds to buy failing mortgages from homeowners and mortgage providers and replace them with government-backed fixed-rate mortgages. What do you think of the plan?   McCain applies the label “American Homeownership Resurgence Plan” to his proposal to spend the $840-billion wealth redistribution bill to buy every defaulted mortgage in America and rewrite them.

When John McCain or Barack Obama becomes president next January, he’ll have a message from me waiting on the Oval Office desk. I’ll be the first line of the first letter. Orange County for Darfur, a grassroots group dedicated to raising awareness about the ongoing crisis in Sudan, staged a mass photo shoot Saturday morning on the beach in Corona del Mar, inviting 100 or more people to lie on the sand and spell out the words “End Genocide Now!” In the group’s news release, it announced plans to have a photographer shoot the demonstration, enlarge the image into a poster and mail it to the incoming U.S. president.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain had to share the national spotlight with a group of Republicans in Costa Mesa on Thursday night as he delivered a speech to accept his party’s nomination. A gathering of party faithful at Gary Monahan’s downtown bar, Skosh Monahan’s, got together to watch the speech and ended up on CNN’s national broadcast for a couple of seconds. The producers of the broadcast cut to a camera sitting in front of the small back room in the restaurant where 50 people spent the evening vociferously cheering for McCain, only to catch the crowd during a rare moment of complete calm.

Saddleback Church Pastor Rick Warren asked presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama to participate in a “civil forum” on faith issues at his church last week. What did you think of the forum and how well do you think the candidates addressed the questions?   We have become a word-weary society. We are quick to say actions speak louder than words. We want values and deeds to be the proof the words are true. But deep down we know the children’s rhyme “sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me” is a lie. We know words can wound and kill.

The Saddleback Church’s Civil Forum on the Presidency got off to a rocky start Saturday. Well, for reporters anyway. Checking in went pretty smoothly, though there were some media outlets griping about their lack of access. That shouldn’t surprise anyone. If you’d asked us to plan the event, we would all have gotten exclusive interviews with both candidates, and John McCain and Barack Obama would still be out there yammering away. Unfortunately for us, reporters weren’t allowed to view McCain and Obama in the church.

Torie Immel will cast her first vote for president this fall. She’s 18, grew up in Newport Beach and was a championship equestrian athlete while attending Mater Dei High School. A lot of prognosticators are predicting a large youth turnout in this presidential election so you might assume Torie’s been paying very close attention to this historic election. But you’d be wrong. And not because Torie’s a typical apathetic teenager. It’s because she’s been spending most of her time in Holland competing as a horseback rider.

Presidential candidates John McCain and Barack Obama are showing Newport Beach voters some love. McCain’s campaign celebrates a grand opening today of its Newport Beach Volunteer Victory Headquarters. And Obama stops by the Balboa Bay Club and another private fundraiser, hoping to rake in a million campaign bucks. Oh sure, they might not agree on what to do about Iraq or how to confront Iran on its nuclear program, and they might have polar opposite cures for Social Security’s solvency, but at least they agree on this: There’s a lot of cash in town.